Archived updates for Friday, December 09, 2005

According Barry Bergman writing for UC Berkeley News on December 2, 2005 the University of California at Berkeley has mereged its Sponsored Projects Office that is responsible for attracting research money and resources to the campus, with the Office of Technology Licensing that is responsible for generating revenue-producing deals. The new organization is called the Office of Intellectual Property and Industry Research Alliances (IPIRA), under Carol Mimura as acting assistant vice chancellor.

"Because we're now under the same roof, the two activities are notcompetitive," she explains. "For instance, if we decide the best way to manage apatent or copyright is to induce research support — as opposed to trying tomaximize revenue by licensing that invention, and helping a company to sellproducts based on it — that's a perfectly fine outcome. But in the past, if ouroffice had that outcome, it would have affected someone else's bottom line.Under the newly organized unit, one outcome is not at the expense of the other."

Under IPIRA, corporate-sponsored research at Berkeley has roughly tripled,Mimura says, and foundation support has also spiked. "It's fulfilling to knowthat when you adopt new metrics for measuring success, and you acknowledge we'reall about research and we're doing all of this in order to stimulate investmentat Berkeley and get our research out for the public good, it also lowers thebarrier for companies to support our work. It also reduces suspicion, and itlowers their hesitancy about giving gifts."

The restructuring, she adds, benefits not just the developing world but thecampus as well. Under IPIRA, corporate-sponsored research at Berkeley hasroughly tripled, Mimura says, and foundation support has also spiked. "It'sfulfilling to know that when you adopt new metrics for measuring success, andyou acknowledge we're all about research and we're doing all of this in order tostimulate investment at Berkeley and get our research out for the public good,it also lowers the barrier for companies to support our work. It also reducessuspicion, and it lowers their hesitancy about giving gifts."

Despite such positive results, Berkeley's program remains the exceptionamong university licensing offices, even within the UC system, whose principlesrequire campuses to obtain "fair valuation" for research produced in their labs.But value, Mimura insists, is in the eye of the IP-holder.